VIDEO: Howard's Gym faces final days in Savannah

Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News Howard Cohen muscles 132 pounds over his head during a workout at Howard's Gym. Still competing as he nears his 80th birthday, Howard is preparing for a competition latter this year.

Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News Howard Cohen leans against the wall as he reminisces about his more than 60 years as owner of Howard's Gym. Howard's will be closing on August 27th after more than 50 years at its current location.

Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News Howard Cohen shouts encouragements to Jonathan Gallup as he attempts a lift during a workout at Howard's Gym. Gallup has received coaching from Cohen on more than just lifting weights. "He's a great coach and he gives me math lessons here and there. I got a 98 in math last semester."

Dared to do a one arm chin-up soon after opening his first gym in 1952, Cohen failed. Yet he dared his challenger to return in two weeks. At that fortnight’s end, Cohen performed the one arm chin-up with not just his right arm but with his left, too.

Today, Cohen faces a new challenge — retirement. And this time, his muscles won’t do him much good beyond helping to wrestle his equipment from the little cinder block building that’s housed his gym for a half century.

Cohen recently sold the property off Victory Drive to a developer who’s building a new retail center to be anchored by Whole Foods. The development will encompass multiple parcels along Victory and Dixie Avenue, including the former Backus automobile dealership.

Cohen has until Aug. 27 to clear out and close what many in the local weightlifting community consider a Savannah institution.

Cohen started his business six decades ago in the former Savannah Morning News building on Bay Street. He moved several times in the following years until finally settling into the Dixie Avenue home in 1959.

“It was tough,” Cohen said. “Nobody in Savannah had ever heard of a gym, and I had to do a lot of work, a lot of personal touch to get it going.”

For the next 30-plus years, Cohen ran the gym, raised a family, taught math in the Savannah-Chatham County public school system, competed as a weightlifter and coached the craft. His star pupil, his son Michael, made the 1980 U.S. Olympic weightlifting team.

“I would go to school at 7 o’clock in the morning, stay there till 2:30 or 3 o’clock, come over and open the gym up and stay here till 9 o’clock,” Cohen said. “It took both jobs to take care of my family. The good thing is I really enjoyed both of them.”

Cohen retired from teaching in the 1980s but continued to operate his gym every afternoon.

Jim Holland began working out there in 1960 with the Jenkins High School football team and has been coming ever since.

“It’s like a little family here. There’s not many of us left,” Holland said. “It’s a way to relieve the tension of the day. Everybody comes in here and cuts up and teases everybody. It’s not just a gym, it’s like a club.”

Today, Howard’s Gym resembles a museum as much as a workout facility, understandable given the age of much of the equipment. The old-school machines add character to a place full of characters, said Jim White, a regular since the mid-1960s.

“There will never be another place just like this. Never,” White said. “None of these fancy places can match it.”

Cohen will stay close to weightlifting even after the gym closes. He will continue to work out, as well as coach his grandson, Mike, and a few others at the Anderson/Cohen Weightlifting Center, 230 Varnedoe Drive, which was named for Cohen and fellow Georgia strongman Paul Anderson.

“It’s been a big ride” he said. “It’s gonna be all right. I’m sure I’m going to miss coming to this place, but the gym I’m going to has got my name on the side of the building.”